Take me to Acapulco is a stop-motion animated short film inspired by a passage from Mexican writer Jorge Ibargüengoitia´s novel The Dead Girls (Las Muertas). The drama unfolds in a hotel room in Acapulco when a woman decides to reveal the story of her life to the man she loves.
Take me to Acapulco will be shown at Oaxaca International Independent Film and Video Festival November 12-19, 2011.
When I travelled from Puebla (Mexico) to Karl Gustav (Sweden) during the summer of 2010, I unintentionally created a link between two remote places, which for a day, overlapped and coexisted in my mind. During this day, both places were equally real and present to me, almost as if they had been located next to each other.
In a similar way I created a link between two distant time periods when I, during the summer of 2008, went to Athens (Greece) and walked the same streets that my father filmed in the early 1970s, in the neighborhood where he grew up in the 30s and 40s. When I tried to follow the same route as him, I could not help looking at everything around me through all the stories that he had told me from his childhood. For a moment a link was created between two distant time periods, which suddenly coincided, as I walked through the very same streets.
What fascinates me about traveling is that you never know what you will encounter in a new place. Moving to Montreal after having lived in Puebla, Mexico, was almost like coming home to Sweden again. However, a big surprise was the traffic quarrels. This is the view from my window and a common sight in Montreal:
Last week I inaugurated my new tripod and took the above photo of myself.
I usually carry with me a couple of pictures of my family. One of my favorite photographs is the one of my dad on the top. It was taken in the late 60s or early 70s, on the house lot where my parents decided to build their house; the house which some years later became my first home.
I like the photograph of my dad because it captures so many things about him, as well as the surroundings where I grew up. It shows the contrast between himself and the place which he and my mum had chosen to start their new life.
When I bought myself the black jacket that I am wearing on the picture, I remembered the photo of my dad, and the resemblence struck me. I decided to take a photo of myself, dressed up as my dad, in my new home in Puebla, Mexico.
Sometimes the longer you stay in a place, the more things there seem to be to discover. A couple of days ago I went to Tehuacán for the first time, which is the second largest city in the state of Puebla. Tehuacán is a city with a long history. Archaeologist have found traces of communities who lived there already around 8000 B.C.
The City of Tehuacán and its surrounding villages have a very rich cultural life. The name Tehuacán comes from the indigenous language Náhuatl and it means the Place of the Gods. The language Náhuatl is widely spoken in this region as well as several other parts of Mexico.
At the zócalo in Tehuacán I met Victor. This is his Dream Day:
In the afternoon we went to an event at the Museo del Valle de Tehuacán. There I met another man called Alfredo Ponce Caranzo, who is a teacher of indigenous eduaction as well as a musician, writing songs in Náhuatl. His Dream Day goes like this:
Cinco de Mayo is a holiday celebrated on the 5th of May, to commemorate the Battle of Puebla in 1862, between the Mexican and the French army. The holiday is celebreated in the state of Puebla, as well as in the USA. Outside Mexico, some people falsely believe that this is Mexico´s Independence Day, which is celebrated on September 16.
In Puebla and by the Mexicans living in the USA, Cinco de Mayo is celebrated as a way to manifest Mexican nationalism and Mexican heritage, and of course to commemorate the first battle in the war with France where the Mexican army defeated a much better equipped French army. (The war was still won by the French though).
Mexican people today have very different opinions about whether Cinco de Mayo should be celebrated or not. Since the Cinco de Mayo parade passes by a few blocks from where I live, I decided to ask the people from Puebla what they thought about the celebrations:
When I went to Café Britania to buy coffee a few days ago, I ran into Edgar González Ruiz. He is a Mexican author, historian and journalist, and while he was waiting for his friend, he let me interview him about his Dream Day:
About an hour from Mexico City, and just over two hours from Puebla, lies an enormous archaeological site called Teotihuacán. Teotihuacán was a prehispanic city which was founded sometime around 200 B.C. The name Teotihuacán comes from the language Náhuatl and means “The city of the gods” or “The place where men became gods”.
At around 450 A.D, the city reached its peak and covered between 20-30 km2, and had an estimated population of 150.000-250.000 people, which made it one of the largest cities in the world at this time. There is not much known about the people who constructed the city and its enormous pyramids. Even the real name of the city is unknown. The name Teotihuacán came from the Aztecs who found the ruins of the city, centuries after it had fallen.
In Teotihuacán two large pyramids stand out; The Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon. The Pyramid of the Sun is the third largest pyramid in the world and it measures 225 m across, and 65 meters high. These pyramids used to be coloured red. Today you can still see some of the traces of the red pigment. It must have been an impressive view to look at these enormous red pyramids towards a clear blue sky, and the green nature surrounding them.
There is a wide avenue connecting the two pyramids called the Avenue of the Dead. The avenue is lined with smaller pyramids on both sides, leading up to the Pyramid of the Moon. The Avenue was given the name The Avenue of the Dead, by the Aztecs who thought that the pyramids in Teotihuacán were enormous tombs. However, the pyramids in Mexico (unlike the ones in Egypt) were not constructed as tombs (with one exception in Palenque, Mexico), but rather as temples, to worship their Gods.
If you walk down the Avenue of the Dead, with the Pyramid of the Moon in your back, you eventually come to another pyramid or temple; The Temple of Quetzalcóatl (the temple of the feathered serpent).
On your way to the temple you can also take a look at some well-preserved murals. Unfortunately we missed many of them, but we did see the Mural of the Puma which was beautiful. (Some people claim it is a Jaguar. We heard a guide talking to a group referring to the mural as the “Jaguar mural”, but Juan´s brother Alan, who is a biologist, said it wasn´t…)
On the way to the Quetzalcóatl temple, you pass a small river and on the other side of it, you can see the ruins of different residential areas. There is little known about what the lives of the people from Teotihuacán were like, but archaeologists have found traces of many different ethnic groups who lived in these residential areas, something which wasn´t common in many other prehispanic cities. This is why Teotihuacán is thought to have been something like a prehispanic New York City, where people lived in different neighborhoods depending on their origin, and where they would keep their old traditions, just like in New York today, where you have places like Little Italy, Greek Astoria etc.
Most of what we know about Teotihuacán today, was discovered by the archaeologists who began to excavate the site in the early 20th Century. However, a hundred years later, there are still many mysteries to be solved. Why was an enormous city like Teotihuacán abandoned at around 600 A.D and what happened to its inhabitants?
Below you can take a look at an old photograph of The Pyramid of the Sun that I recently found in an antique store.
I love Mexico City. No matter how many times you go there, there is always something new to explore. This time we went to what might be the most obvious choice for a tourist: Templo Mayor.
Mexico City, or Tenochtitlan as the city was called before the arrival of the Spaniards, was founded in 1325 by the Mexica people (also called the Aztecs). Tenochtitlan was located on an island in the Lake Texcoco and the ruins of this prehispanic city can now be found in the centre of today´s Mexico City.
According to the Mexica, they had been led to this spot by Huitzilopochtli, the god of war. He had told them that when they would find an eagle, sitting on a nopal cactus, with a snake in its beak, then that would be the place of their new home. That was supposed to be the exact location of where they later constructed Templo Mayor. The story about the eagle is also the explanation behind the symbol on the Mexican flag.
In 1519, the Spaniards, under Hernan Cortés arrived to Tenochtitlan. Templo Mayor, which was one of the main temples of the Mexica, was destroyed in 1521 and covered together with the rest of the city by the new Spanish colonial city.
At the end of the 19th century, archaeologists started to excavate the city centre, searching for traces of Tenochtitlan. At first, excavations were made beneath the Cathedral as it was first thought that Templo Mayor was to be found there (the church in Cholula, Puebla was built on top of a pyramid for example). However, it wasn´t until the 1970s that Templo Mayor was fully excavated.
Today you can find the archaeological site, together with the museum of Templo Mayor, at the corner of the Zócalo, next to the cathedral. It is impressive to stand there and be able to look at three different eras at the same time; The modern Mexico City, the colonial city and its cathedral, as well as the ruins of the pre-hispanic Tenochtitlan.
Templo Mayor consists of several pyramids, or temples, that were built one on top of the other. The first pyramid was built sometime after 1325 and after that they built six more on top of it. The seventh and the last temple was the one that Hernan Cortés saw when he arrived to the city. There is little known about this last layer because of to the destroyal by the Spaniards.
From the historical records, the seventh temple was a very large and important ceremonial centre. There were two smaller temples situated on the top. One of them was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, and the other one to Tláloc, the god of rain and water.
An important sculptural figure in the temple, is the “Chacmool”. The Chacmool was thought to have served as a mediator between the humans and the gods, and to whom the Aztecs would give their human offerings. After these human sacrifices, where the hearts would be removed and placed in the bowl on the lap of the Chacmool, the bodies would be thrown down the stairs.
The Chacmool (see picture above) is well preserved and you can still see it at the archaeological site. Other smaller, and more fragile objects, have been moved to the new-built museum next to the site where you can take a closer look at the different objects from the prehispanic city.
Mexico City might be a polluted and overpopulated city, but the Zócalo is beautiful and impressive, and when you walk around it, you can almost feel some of the magic of the city´s dramatic history.
